Economy simply means what goes on from house/home to the commercial settlement. Economy is the busy human activities between home/residential area and commercial area. You will agree with me that post COVID-19 era, brought with it serious increase in the prices of goods and services. While insecurity means when the activities that goes on between residential area and commercial area is no longer what is expected. Examples: corruption crime, pollution (in this case mental pollution, where kids are exposed to adult activities like sex, smoking, pornography).
Another School of thought i.e. According to the family stress model, economic insecurities such as low income places economic pressure on families, leading to heightened parenting stress and depression, which in turn, increase harsh parenting and child maltreatment (Conger et al., 1992; Duncan, Magnuson, & Votruba-Drzal, 2014; Yang, 2015). We should by now stop bringing research done in 1992 and 2014, but get 2022 researches or you make your own 2022 research and submit. We are now nuclear age. People are traveling to the moon to spend holiday from Russia. For example space rockets built by Elon Musk company Space X, now sends technologies remotely from earth to the orbit nowadays and people are using new money aka cryptocurrency coins.
What happens when there is economic Insecurity
- Unemployment/Underemployment
- Sickness and disabilities many more with mental health challenges
- Widowhood and Union dissolution
- Increased crime rate
- Increase child abuse and vulnerability
- Loss of parental confidence
Unemployment/Underemployment
Lots of people lost there Job after the COVID-19 era. Even the government experienced economic downturn as this is evidence with some states of the federation not been able to pay the full salaries of their employees. This translates with parents seeking other jobs like side hustle to be able to sustain their families. The implications of this on the child is as follows: Parents no longer have time for their children, all the needs of the child can no longer be meet promptly
Union dissolution
The harsh economic realities increased domestic violence, and has lead to a lot of couples going on their different ways, which leads to single parenting and may lead to increased child vulnerability. As children are left on their own to social media, they pick up all forms of harmful content that leads to increased criminality which later on affect their values. Jobs are also online, examples are affiliate marketing, export/import, digital marketing, NGO activities, youth and women empowerment projects, freelancing, online coaching, mentoring and restaurants operations (the world is hungry!) and money businesses like (POS, grant applications, loan application, mortgage plans, cryptocurrency coins e-wallet creation and market investments.
Impact of the above on our Children
- Increase in the numbers of school dropouts.
- Reduced standard of living.
- Increased number of children in the work force (as they now have to support their parents).
- Increased criminality as seen in Yahoo Yahoo (Cyber Fraud), they get rich syndrome in our young adults.
- Increased children prostitution.
What can be done
- Couples may have to cut down on their expenditures to live within their income.
- Families should get involved in farming.
- Young ones should acquire life enhancing skills with their smart phones and not life damaging ones.
- Parents should get involved in the day to day activities of their children to guide them accordingly.
- Families should pray together, study the holy books together, so our children don’t get caught up with the insanity that has come over the world.
- Lets mould the needed resilience required to be upright in our children.
- Let’s reach out to the vulnerable children around us, lets show them love, share with them information that can advance their course.
- Lets all return to being our brother’s keeper. I do hope that with all of these we will be able to salvage the children of today who are our future.
How can citizens make the government responsible?
Well in my Opinion, it starts with the electioneering process. Let citizens get registered, get your Personal Voters Card (PVC), vote wisely and don’t sell their vote.
The government has a lot to do but then we can not leave it to the government alone. We all in our spheres can contribute our quota to create enabling environment for the children in Nigeria.
Facilitator: Yemi Faboyo-Agbede an DSC, Superintendent of Corps with The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC).
